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The American Psychological Association (APA) needed to update its older financial accounting software. The APA is the largest scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States. With more than 134,000 members and 600 employees, their mission is to advance the creation, communication and application of psychological knowledge to benefit society and improve people’s lives. They didn’t want to be spending extra time with their accounting software, but focus on this mission!

So the search began. The APA found what they wanted in Serenic Navigator, such as: workflow, and viewing balances in the system right away as opposed to waiting for a sub ledger to close for the month. Read more…

We recently spoke with Martin Lampner, President for Chimes International, who shared why they wanted to upgrade their nonprofit financial management software.

Chimes and its subsidiaries, the Chimes Family of Services, offer a wide range of support for people with disabilities and special needs – from employment and educational programs to residential and behavioral health services. For more than six decades, the organization has helped more than 17,000 people each year in six states, the District of Columbia and Israel by emphasizing and promoting the unique abilities of individuals while achieving and sustaining each person’s well-being and independence.

Since 1999, Finley & Cook has worked hand-in-hand with Serenic as a successful, growing Global Partner Network member. Collaborating with Serenic’s dedicated partner support team helps Finley & Cook meet specific clients’ needs with Serenic Navigator, our financial management system built upon Microsoft Dynamics NAV with features important to the firm’s tribal sector specialization, such as true fund accounting, support for both accrual and cash-based accounting, and ease of use. Read more…

I’ve been working with Medair for the last couple of months on the requirements gathering, planning, and remote training sessions so we can implement Serenic AwardVision (nonprofit grants management) and Serenic Fixed Assets. Both are replacing manual processes and providing the NGO with streamlined reporting.

Medair was previously tracking grants in Microsoft Excel or Word documents and entering them as funds into Serenic Navigator. This process has been a bit challenging for the finance department and the grant writers with respect to reporting and tracking the status of the grants, etc. In addition to the challenges with reporting, Medair was manually processing the admin booking (indirect costs) and revenue recognition each quarter. During our onsite visit in Switzerland, we wrapped up setup items and procedures and provided training to the project team, finance staff, grant writers and International Operations. The team is very enthused to now have the ability to maintain the grants and reporting all in one system, with visibility into the status of expenses, recognized revenue, indirect cost and the many other data tracking methods available.

We also met with the finance staff and logistics department on management of the assets. This is a manual tracking process (asset master record information, depreciation and disposals) that has been rather cumbersome for the team, especially with getting field office asset changes back to HQ or logistics. Along with the Medair staff, we set forth the requirements to implement the Serenic Fixed Assets granule in February.

During my onsite visit, I was able tour the beautiful city of Lausanne, the second largest city on Lake Geneva and the location of the headquarters of the International Olympic Committee. I experienced hot wine, real French crepes, authentic Swiss fondue and, of course, Swiss chocolates! I probably gained about 5 lbs from over-indulging in the cheese and chocolates J. Geert from Medair showed me some museums and the beautiful Lausanne Cathedral (originally built in the 12th century), on his day off…how sweet! The Medair finance department also invited me to experience a traditional Swiss dinner with raclette cheese, smoked meat and potatoes. Thomas made a killer tiramisu (I know, this is Italian instead of French, but it was too good to leave out)! The hospitality of the Medair team was incredible!

Of course, I had to add some excitement to the visit by setting a bowl of potato chips on fire, during apero (sort of like a happy hour/gathering). Luckily, the Medair staff was well equipped with fire safety training to stomp it out. I was grateful nothing was damaged and nobody was hurt. The Medair staff got a good laugh and snapped pictures during the fiasco (which I am not posting)!

All in all, it was a great visit and we made some major progress with the project.

The Malawi Government moved to a decentralized model through 40 Local Assemblies across the country created to enhance service delivery for education, health, agriculture and other areas. The central government ofﬁce needed to help its local authorities become more accountable and overcome the challenges of a ﬁnancial management system based on manual operations that lacked standardization and created multiple problems with budget execution and implementation. The Malawi Government implemented Serenic Navigator Advanced Management Edition – certiﬁed for Microsoft Dynamics NAV for 300 trained users across the country. The features that helped them benefit include:

A new case study describing international media ministry Trans World Radio’s (TWR) upgrade to Serenic Navigator 2009. TWR provides programming and other spiritual content in more than 200 languages and dialects across 160 countries. After benefitting from Serenic Navigator’s productivity and multi-currency capabilities since 2003, TWR wanted to upgrade to Navigator 2009 across its 30-person finance department – with accounting staff in nine different countries and data transferred between servers in five geographic locations.

TWR was one of the first Serenic clients to upgrade to Navigator 2009. It had been four years since the organization’s last upgrade, so its users looked forward to new ease-of-use features and functionality built into the system’s user interface, resulting in a greatly enhanced user experience. Other benefits included:

The new architecture enables a smaller database that helps save TWR valuable time and data storage space.

The improved user experience provides a familiar user interface that is easy to use, minimizes training time, helps prioritize tasks and makes quick business decisions possible.

Thank you to TWR CFO Steve Hippe and Cheryl Reynolds, TWR finance support specialist, for sharing their story. “The general consensus among our users is that Navigator 2009 saves time on a daily basis,” according to Reynolds. “Overall, what used to take three to four steps, can now be accomplished in one or two steps.”

Serenic’s team is looking forward to growing with TWR in its continued success. View the entire case study.

Jim Ingram, CEO/Finance Director at Medair, shares how Serenic Navigator helps them live their core values of accountability and integrity. Based in Switzerland, Medair has complex fund accounting needs with over 120 grants and funds. As an international NGO, they need to be able to segregate grant money by fund and do multi-currency. Serenic Navigator has provided more timely and accurate reporting on these grants to their funders, and better cash management.

“Finance is about timing and accuracy… you need the right software to do that.” – Jim Ingram.

“It was fantastic that Serenic Navigator was based on Microsoft NAV. The fact that we were already using Navision mitigated the expenses of training and migrating data. The terminology, forms and screenshots were already familiar to us. In terms of the cost of the transition to meet our growth needs, Serenic seemed like the best of both worlds, because it was a fund accounting system.”

- Kirk Mitchell, Director of Finance

World Hope International is a Christian relief and development organization working with vulnerable and exploited communities to alleviate poverty, suffering and injustice. The nonprofit, based in Alexandria, Va., goes to remote areas and partners with people in an effort to bring healing, restoration and positive, sustainable change. Its programs offer opportunity, dignity and hope in places where those things are usually in short supply.

With the help of its accounting firm in 2004, World Hope International selected Microsoft Dynamics NAV (then called Navision) to help it track international programs by project, country and other elements, such as microfinance, anti-trafficking and rural development – including water and sanitation projects. When he joined the organization, Director of Finance Kirk Mitchell was pleased they had chosen NAV, because he had helped implement the system at his previous accounting firm.

The Diocese of Fargo was founded in 1897 and includes 13 schools, 136 parishes in the eastern half of North Dakota, with 102 priests serving a Catholic population of 85,570. Prior to implementing Serenic Navigator, the organization struggled to find an accounting software product that could handle both the routine and specific requirements needed in the three different types of entities it serves: a traditional diocesan multiple funds and multiple department structure, a foundation structure, and a deposit and loan structure.

“As a result, we had to bandage products or elements of products together, duplicate entry efforts, and manually track and/or enter routine items,” said Scott A. Hoselton, the finance officer at the Diocese of Fargo. “Serenic Navigator has the flexibility and functionality to handle all of our needs in one program, with the underlying power to meet everyday and unexpected needs as they arise.”

“Much like any other business, the day-to-day operation of a parish has grown in complexity over the years,” said Deacon Tim Reilly, director of administration for the diocese. “Through the collaboration of our parish, school and diocesan leaders, we are adopting solutions such as Serenic Navigator to help us streamline important business functions and use technology to our advantage.”

“Perhaps the most important functionality we gained with Serenic Navigator is the ability to import data directly from the university donor system. This saves 10 – 15 man-hours each week by eliminating duplication of effort and mistakes that were routinely made because of manual data input.”

– Jennifer Bonenfant, Associate Director of Audit and Accounting

Headquartered on the main campus in historic Charlottesville, the University of Virginia (UVA) Alumni Association is comprised of a staff of over 50 and is governed by the board of managers. The board’s primary responsibility is to administer the more than $50 million donated each year to the university’s various foundations, scholarship programs, and trusts.

A fact of life for almost all non-for-profit (NFP) organizations is the need to do more with less — to maximize efficiencies and eliminate redundancies. The UVA Alumni Association is no different.

“From a technological standpoint, Serenic Navigator had everything we were looking for in an accounting system,” Bonenfant said. “When combined with Serenic’s professional and timely response to our requirements and the fact that full implementation was achieved within our budget, the overall package is unbeatable.”